This invention relates, in general, to methods for automatically inspecting items, and more particularly, to a method for automatically inspecting the location and surface of a device.
During the assembly of components in a manufacturing cycle it becomes necessary to verify the location, alignment, and condition of articles being used in the cycle. This is particularly true in an automated or semi-automated assembly cycle. Lasers have been used in some applications to determine the actual position of articles. However, lasers are expensive and complex to implement. More recently solid state television cameras have been used to visually monitor an article. The data from the camera can then be processed in a digital manner to determine the coordinate location of the article. However, the manner in which the data is processed determines the speed and accuracy of the monitoring system.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of manipulating data to automatically inspect an article.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method to automatically inspect an article in a manner that is fast and accurate.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide visual data and a statistical summary of such in a real time automatic fashion so that it can be used in a feedback process control system.
A further object of the present invention is to use gray scale imaging techniques for intelligently thresholding the gray scale edge-enhanced image to obtain binary direction edge features.